Van Rijn’s eyes glittered at him. “What is your theory?” he demanded.

  “Oh—” Per spread his hands. “Yuschenkoff’s, more or less. They were afraid we were the spearhead of an invasion. When we acted reasonably decently—refraining from mistreatment of prisoners, thanks to Manuel, and using stunners rather than blasters in the rescue operation—they decided they were mistaken.”

  Manuel had not shifted a muscle in face or body, as far as I could see. But Van Rijn’s battleship prow of a nose swung toward him and the merchant laughed, “You have maybe a little different notion, ha? Come, spew it out.”

  “My place is not to contradict my captain,” said the Nuevo Méxican.

  “So why you make fumblydiddles against orders, that day on Cain? When you know better, then you got a duty, by damn, to tell us where to stuff our heads.”

  “If the señor commands. But I am no learned man. I have no book knowledge of studies made on the psychonomy. It is only that…that I think I know those Yildivans. They seem not so unlike men of the barranca country on my home world, and again among the Rovers.”

  “How so?”

  “They live very near death, their whole lives. Courage and skill in fighting, those are what they most need to survive, and so are what they most treasure. They thought, seeing us use machines and weapons that kill from afar, seeing us blinded by night and most of us clumsy in the woods, hearing us talk about what our life is like at home—they thought we lacked cojones. So they scorned us. They owed us nothing, since we were spiritless and could never understand their own spirit. We were only fit to be the prey, first of their wits and then of their weapons.” Manuel’s shoulders drew straight. His voice belled out so that I jumped in my seat. “When they found how terrible men are, that they themselves are the weak ones, we changed in their eyes from peasants to kings!”

  Van Rijn sucked noisily on his cigar. “Any other shipboard notions?” he asked.

  “No, sir, those were our two schools of thought,” Per said.

  Van Rijn guffawed. “So! Take comfort, freemen. No need for angelometrics on pinheads. Relax and drink. You are both wrong.”

  “I beg your pardon,” Harry rapped. “You were not there, may I say.”

  “No, not in the flesh.” Van Rijn slapped his paunch. “Too much flesh for that. But tonight I have been on Cain up here, in this old brain, and it is rusty and afloat in alcohol but it has stored away more information about the universe than maybe the universe gets credit for holding. I see now what the parallels are. Xanadu, Dunbar, Tametha, Disaster Landing…oh, the analogue is never exact and on Cain the thing I am thinking of has gone far and far…but still I see the pattern, and what happened makes sense.

  “Not that we have got to have an analogue. You gave us so many clues here that I could solve the puzzle by logic alone. But analogues help, and also they show my conclusion is not only correct but possible.”

  Van Rijn paused. He was so blatantly waiting to be coaxed that Harry and I made a long performance out of refreshing our drinks. Van Rijn turned purple, wheezed a while, decided to keep his temper for a better occasion, and chortled.

  “Hokay, you win,” he said. “I tell you short and fast, because very soon we eat if the cook has not fallen in the curry. Later you can study the formal psychologics.

  “The key to this problem is the Lugals. You have been calling them slaves, and there is your mistake. They are not. They are domestic animals.”

  Per sat bolt upright. “Can’t be!” he exclaimed. “Sir. I mean, they have language and—”

  “Ja, ja, ja, for all I care they do mattress algebra in their heads. They are still tame animals. What is a slave, anyhows? A man who has got to do what another man says, willy-billy. Right? Harry said he would not trust a slave with weapons, and I would not either, because history is too pocked up with slave revolts and slaves running away and slaves dragging their feet and every such foolishness. But your big fierce expensive dogs, Harry, you trust them with their teeth, nie? When your kids was little and wet, you left them alone in rooms with a dog to keep watches. There is the difference. A slave may or not obey. But a domestic animal has got to obey. His genes won’t let him do anything different.

  “Well, you yourselves figured the Yildivans had kept Lugals so long, breeding them for what traits they wanted, that this had changed the Lugal nature. Must be so. Otherwise the Lugals would be slaves, not animals, and could not always be trusted the way you saw they were. You also guessed the Yildivans themselves must have been affected, and this is very sleek thinking only you did not carry it so far you ought. Because everything you tell about the Yildivans goes to prove by nature they are wild animals.

  “I mean wild, like tigers and buffalos. They have no genes for obediences, except to their parents when they are little. So long have they kept Lugals to do the dirty work—before they really became intelligent, I bet, like ants keeping aphids; for remember, you found no Lugals that was not kept—any gregarious-making genes in the Yildivans, any inborn will to be led, has gone foof. This must be so. Otherwise, from normal variation in ability, some form of Yildivan ranks would come to exist, nie?

  “This pops your fear-of-invasion theory, Per Stenvik. With no concept of a tribe or army, they can’t have any notions about conquest. And wild animals don’t turn humble when they are beat, Manuel Gómez y Palomares, the way you imagine. A man with a superiority complexion may lick your boots when you prove you are his better; but an untamed carnivore hasn’t got any such pride in the first place. He is plain and simple independent of you.

  “Well, then, what did actual go on in their heads?

  “Recapitalize. Humans land and settle down to deal. Yildivans have no experience of races outside their own planet. They natural assume you think like them. In puncture of fact, I believe they could not possible imagine anything else, even if they was told. Your findings about their culture structure shows their half-symbiosis with the Lugals is psychological too; they are specialized in the brains, not near so complicated as man.

  “But as they get better acquaintanced, what do they see? People taking orders. How can this be? No Yildivan ever took orders, unless to save his life when an enemy stood over him with a sharp thing. Ah, ha! So some of the strangers is Lugal type. Pretty soon, I bet, old Shivaru decides all of you is Lugal except young Stenvik, because in the end all orders come from him. Some others, like Manuel, is straw bosses maybe, but no more. Tame animals.

  “And then Per mentions the idea of God.”

  Van Rijn crossed himself with a somewhat irritating piety. “I make no blasfuming,” he said. “But everybody knows our picture of God comes in part from our kings. If you want to know how Oriental kings in ancient days was spoken to, look in your prayer book. Even now, we admit He is the Lord, and we is supposed to do His will, hoping He will not take too serious a few things that happen to anybody like anger, pride, envy, gluttony, lust, sloth, greed, and the rest what makes life fun.

  “Per said this. So Per admitted he had a master. But then he must also be a Lugal—an animal. No Yildivan could possible confess to having even a mythical master, as shown by the fact they have no religion themselves though their Lugals seem to.

  “Give old boy Shivaru his credits, he came again with some friends to ask further. What did he learn? He already knew everybody else was a Lugal, because of obeying. Now Per said he was no better than the rest. This confirmed Per was also a Lugal. And what blew the cork out of the bottle was when Per said he nor none of them had any owners at home!

  “Whup, whup, slow down, youngster. You could not have known. Always we make discoveries the hard way. Like those poor Yildivans.

  “They was real worried, you can imagine. Even dogs turn on people now and then, and surely some Lugals go bad once in a while on Cain and make big trouble before they can get killed. The Yildivans had seen some of your powers, knew you was dangerous…and your breed of Lugal must have gone mad and killed off its own Yildivans. How else could you be Lugals and yet have no masters?

  “So. What would you and I do, friends, if we lived in lonely country houses and a pack of wild dogs what had killed people set up shop in our neighborhood?”

  Van Rijn gurgled beer down his throat. We pondered for a while. “Seems pretty farfetched,” Harry said.

  “No.” Per’s cheeks burned with excitement. “It fits. Freeman Van Rijn put into words what I always felt as I got to know Shivaru. A—a single-mindedness about him. As if he was incapable of seeing certain things, grasping certain ideas, though his reasoning faculties were intrinsically as good as mine. Yes…”

  I nodded at my pipe, which had been with me when I clashed against stranger beings than that.

  “So two of them first took advantage of you,” Van Rijn said, “to swindle away what they could before the attack because they wasn’t sure the attack would work. No shame there. You was outside the honor concept, being animals. Animals whose ancestors must have murdered a whole race of true humans, in their views. Then the alarmed males tried to scrub you out. They failed, but hoped maybe to use their prisoners for a lever to pry you off their country. Only Manuel fooled them.”

  “But why’d they change their minds about us?” Per asked.

  Van Rijn wagged his finger. “Ha, there you was lucky. You gave a very clear and important order. Your men disobeyed every bit of it. Now Lugals might go crazy and kill off Yildivans, but they are so bred to being bossed that they can’t stand long against a leader. Or if they do, it’s because they is too crazy to think straight. Manuel, though, was thinking straight like a plumber line. His strategy worked five-four-three-two-one-zero. Also, your people did not kill more Yildivans than was needful, which crazy Lugals would do.

  “So you could not be domestic animals after all, gone bad or not. Therefore you had to be wild animals. The Cainite mind—a narrow mind like you said—can’t imagine any third horn on that special bull. If you had proved you was not Lugal type, you must be Yildivan type. Indications to the contrariwise, the way you seemed to take orders or acknowledge a Lord, those must have been misunderstandings on the Cainites’ part.

  “Once he had time to reason this out, Shivaru saw his people had done yours dirty. Partway he felt bad about it in his soul, if he has one stowed somewhere; Yildivans do have some notion about upright behavior to other Yildivans. And besides, he did not want to lose a chance at your fine trade goods. He convinced his friends. They did what best they could think about to make amendments.”

  Van Rijn rubbed his palms together in glee. “Oh, ho, ho, what customers they will be for us!” he roared.

  We sat still for another time, digesting the idea, until the butler announced dinner. Manuel helped Per rise. “We’ll have to instruct everybody who goes to Cain,” the young man said. “I mean, not to let on that we aren’t wild animals, we humans.”

  “But, Captain,” Manuel said, and his head lifted high, “we are.”

  Van Rijn stopped and looked at us a while. Then he shook his own head violently and shambled bearlike to the viewer wall. “No,” he growled. “Some of us are.”

  “How’s that?” Harry wondered.

  “We here in this room are wild,” Van Rijn said. “We do what we do because we want to or because it is right. No other motivations, nie? .If you made slaves of us, you would for sure not be wise to let us near a weapon.

  “But how many slaves has there been, in Earth’s long history, that their masters could trust? Quite some! There was even armies of slaves, like the Janissaries. And how many people today is domestic animals at heart? Wanting somebody else should tell them what to do, and take care of their needfuls, and protect them not just against their fellow men but against themselves? Why has every free human society been so short-lived? Is this not because the wild-animal men are born so heartbreaking seldom?”

  He glared out across the city, where it winked and glittered beneath the stars, around the curve of the planet. “Do you think they yonder is free?” he shouted. His hand chopped downward in scorn.

  Recruiting Nation

  At first she was only another spark and would have been lost in the star swarms did she not show the flicker and twinkle of an irregular body rotating in spatial sunlight. But the boat closed swiftly in. Astra swelled to a globe, to a city of clustered domes and turrets and housings and machines, to a world filling nearly half the sky. I leaned back in my safety harness and watched the play of radiance and shadow across that medley, as we spiraled toward rendezvous. The low power-hum vibrated in me like the beat of my own blood. The words that came to me from the forward section, where my pilot spoke with a traffic control officer, were laconic; but bugles have sent less of a shiver along my skin.

  Here was the ship that would seek new suns.

  Not at once, I reminded myself. At least two years’ worth of work—basic work, not the improvements that the crew can make during her long voyage—remains to be done. Including this debugging job of mine. And didn’t Garrett drop some remark about recruiting troubles, about there not yet being a minimal complement committed to go? I can’t understand that. When did a splendid vision ever lack for followers?

  An entry port gaped before us. I felt the slight, elastic impact when the mesh field took hold on our hull and eased it into a cradle. The lock closed and air brawled in to repressurize the chamber. My pilot checked his gauges, uttered a final sentence to the control office, opened a master switch, and started unharnessing. Here we are, Mr. Sanders,” he said.

  “Well, thanks.” I undid my own webbing. “You bound straight back?”

  “Oh, I may have a cup of coffee first somewhere, if I can find somebody worth talking to. But otherwise, yeah, no reason to stay.” He yawned. “You’ll probably be around for days or worse. I do sympathize. Mase us a call the instant you’re through, and if it’s me that’s sent to fetch you, I’ll cram on every g this boat has got.”

  It puzzled me. True, he must have visited the ship fairly often; but weren’t she and her folk inexhaustible? I didn’t inquire, because the chamber was now airful and the inner gate had swung wide. Two men waited. The pilot opened a valve for me and I clattered down the cradle stairs and across the deck to greet them.

  One was grizzled and portly, his most conspicuous feature a rose nose, his garments a zigzag of reds, blues, and yellows so bright that my eyes hurt. He grabbed my hand and pumped it as if hoping I’d spout water. “Winston Sanders, hey?” he boomed. “Welcome aboard, welcome aboard. I’m your friendly chief engineer of interior power; Hodge is my name, Hodge Furlow, that is. When I heard you were making approach, I came right down to meet you personally. Have a nice trip?”

  Slightly deafened, I contented myself with saying, “It was okay, thanks. Er—” My gaze went to the other man, who stood or rather loomed behind Furlow. He was a conspicuous object. Though his enormous shoulders hunched forward, he was a head taller than me, and the beer belly that strained his slovenly coverall didn’t make him appear less formidable. His face did, a little: coarse features, stubblefield jaw, not much forehead, but at least a vacant grin. “Uh, Mr…?”

  “Oh. That’s J. P.,” Furlow said. “My special assistant. You have baggage?”

  “A fair amount. I brought my basic gear, instruments, tools, standards…you know.”

  Furlow looked hurt. “I assure you we’re well supplied in my department, Win.”

  “Where you’re going, you’d better be,” I said snappishly. I don’t like hearing my first name on first acquaintance. “However, I’m used to my own kit. And you’ve not had any dazzling success with yours, have you?”

  “True, alas, true.” Furlow dropped his tone to a dull roar. “Well, J. P. will bring it to your quarters.” Turning to his companion. “You read me, J. P.? Go in that boat. Ask for Mr. Sanders’ baggage. Put it on a carrier. Take it to Suite Forty-six on M Deck. Got it?”

  “Baggage,” the giant replied. His voice was surprisingly high. “Suite Forty-six. M Deck. Okay.” He slouched off.

  Furlow linked arms with me. “Let’s make for my quarters, Win. You must be tired. We’ll chat over a drink and a smoke till lunch.”

  Perforce I accompanied him, into a corridor so long that its ends were hidden by the curvature of the ship. Nothing relieved it except doors and side passages. No doubt the decoration of its metal harshness, and that of hundreds like it, would help occupy the man-years of an interstellar voyage. At present it lay eerily empty and silent. I heard pumps throb, I caught gusts of warm, oily air, but chiefly I was conscious of how loudly our footfalls echoed.

  “I’m not tired,” I said. “Slept well last nightwatch. Shouldn’t I pay my respects to the captain?”

  “He’s not aboard,” Furlow answered. “Seldom is. What would he be doing? The senior officer on duty in the executive department—um, I can’t think who that’d be but it doesn’t matter. Some fourth- or fifth-level stripling. I’m sure I rank him, whoever he is. And he’s probably still in bed—not necessarily alone, haw!”—a thumb nearly stove in a rib of mine “—and wouldn’t appreciate having to act official. If he wants to see you, he’ll let us know.”

  Oof ! my mind exclaimed in its shock. Before me rose the image of every other spacecraft I’d ever been inside, and unterraformed asteroids, unearthly planets, moons of Neptune. The ultimate thin wall between men and raw space was discipline. Do they figure to reach Alpha Centauri in this condition?

  “Well,” I said harshly, “in that case, let’s take a look at the system. The sooner I get to work, the sooner I can hope to crack your problem.”

  “Are you the solid-state citizen!” Furlow shook his head and clicked his tongue. “As you wish. To be frank, I doubt if you can accomplish much. No reflection on you, my boy. But your old Uncle Hodge isn’t a complete fumblethumb, if I say it as shouldn’t. No, he’s not quite ready for the last orbit, these old brain cells still have some juice in them—and I’ve been working for months, Win, months, without getting into trajectory. With my whole team, remember, and a holdful of apparatus. I probably should have hollered to your company earlier, but I thought and I think, if we couldn’t track down the cause, nobody can. You see, I don’t believe the trouble has any simple cause.”